In this era of “fake news” and rising populism, encountering conspiracy theories is becoming a daily phenomenon. Some people usually shrug them off – they find them too simplistic, biased or far-fetched – but others are taken in. And if a person believes one kind of conspiracy theory, they usually believe others.

Psychologists are very interested in why some people are more inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, especially since the consequences can be harmful: for example, by avoiding getting their kids vaccinated, believers in vaccination conspiracies can harm wider public health; in other cases, a belief in a conspiracy against one’s own ethnic or religious group can foment radicalism.

One of the main differences between conspiracy believers and nonbelievers that’s cropped up in multiple studies is that nonbelievers tend to be more highly educated. For a new study in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Jan-Willem Van Prooijen at VU Amsterdam has conducted two large surveys to try to dig into just what it is about being more educated that seems to inoculate against belief in conspiracy.

For the first survey, Van Prooijen recruited over 4000 readers of a popular science journal in the Netherlands, with an average age of 32. He asked them about their formal education level and their belief in various well-known conspiracy theories, such as that the moon landings were hoax; he tested their feelings of powerlessness; their subjective sense of their social class (they located their position on a social ladder); and their belief in simple solutions, such as that “most problems in society are easy to solve”.

The more highly educated a participant, the less likely they were to endorse the conspiracy theories. Importantly, several of the other measures were linked to education and contributed to the association between education and less belief in conspiracy: feeling less powerlessness (or more in control), feelings of higher social status, and being sceptical of simple solutions.

A second survey was similar, but this time Van Prooijen quizzed nearly 1000 participants, average age 50, selected to be representative of the wider Dutch population. Also, there were two phases: for the first, participants answered questions about their education level; feelings of power; subjective social class; belief in simple solutions; and they took some basic tests of their analytical thinking skills. Then two weeks later, the participants rated their belief in various conspiracy theories.

Once again, more education was associated with less belief in conspiracy theories, and this seemed to be explained in part by more educated participants feeling more in control, having less belief in simple solutions, and having stronger analytical skills. Subjective social class wasn’t relevant in this survey.

Taken together, Van Prooijen said the results suggest that “the relationship between education and belief in conspiracy theories cannot be reduced to a single psychological mechanism but is the product of the complex interplay of multiple psychological processes.”

The nature of his study means we can’t infer that education or the related factors he measured actually cause less belief in conspiracies. But it makes theoretical sense that they might be involved: for example, more education usually increases people’s sense of control over their lives (though there are exceptions, for instance among people from marginalized groups), while it is feelings of powerlessness that is one of the things that often attracts people to conspiracy theories.

Importantly, Van Prooijen said his findings help make sense of why education can contribute to “a less paranoid society” even when conspiracy theories are not explicitly challenged. “By teaching children analytic thinking skills along with the insight that societal problems often have no simple solutions, by stimulating a sense of control, and by promoting a sense that one is a valued member of society, education is likely to install the mental tools that are needed to approach far-fetched conspiracy theories with a healthy dose of skepticism.”

78 thoughts on “Why more highly educated people are less into conspiracy theories”

One massive flaw in this article is the lack of information on said “strongly educated” IQ’s, or gathering data on their actual intelligence as opposed to simply getting an education in university as evidence. Almost anyone can attend universities, this has very little to do with their actual individual intellect. Who can’t name someone they went to college with who isn’t that bright? Would have been a stronger article had anything about actual measured intelligence. Not claiming to know one way or the other just seems extremely biased and filling in an article without the most important information on the people studied; Especially when it comes to studying the way people think, calling “conspiracy theorists” stupid and uneducated essentially. The personality and perspective of the writer is more telling than the actual “evidence”. It’s lacking.

You are perfect example of an uneducated person who lacks critical thinking skills that this article describes. Don’t you know that anyone who believes any conspiracy is stupid? The only people who believe conspiracy theories are those with low IQs. The highly educated elites are better than everyone else and feel more in control.

“Who can’t name someone they went to college with who isn’t that bright?” This is like saying most people win the lottery because I saw someone win on TV. Yes the uncommon example is interesting and easy to find, but it does not represent the average or norm of a group.
“The personality and perspective of the writer is more telling than the actual “evidence”. It’s lacking.” This is you saying this opinion is not flattering of you so you don’t like it. Do you really think you can determine personality and perspective from this short article?

Those who attend college,and especially those who graduate with atleast a 4 year degree,become SOCIALIZED in the same manner.It’s not so much about intelligience,but about the education PROCESS that enables people to attain “social tools”which gives individuals a framework of thought processes and lends confidence to the people who’ve attained a homogenous level of processing thoughts.

This guy is as lame as they get anyone that buys his books deserve what they get. Advanced critical thinking is what brings these hoaxes to their knees. Idiots like this writer bank on the herd mentality to get them through and hope that the lion eats someone on the outside of the herd. I will now be writing to let people know who this fraud really is. What a fool believes.

And yet millions of highly educated people still believe in god because it’s an accepted ‘conspiracy theory’, or at least some of them pretend to believe. Most people just don’t want to be known as crackpots, or heathens unless their friends are crackpots and heathens too.

Belief in a god is a cultural theory, not a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists believe in secret plans and planners that more rational people understand would serve no realistic purposes. Not that the higher educated are necessarily rational, but it couldn’t hurt.

That reply indicates ignorance. What you perceive as a realistic purpose within your current worldview would be entirely different under the conditions of the alternative reality that you’re dismissing without investigation.

That’s essentially what it is. As much as the west preaches individualism and non-collectivism, we are very much a society lead by the herd. No one wants to be seen as a pariah, a lone wolf, a “crackpot” as you put it, at least intellectually, so they will be in either one or two camps. The popularity and hence size of said camp likely depends on who takes hold of the narrative and yells the loudest.

Because quality education enables skills such as critical thinking, objectivity, and knowledge? Highly educated individuals tend to be the most free-thinking and open-minded individuals in our society, the ones who enable their imagination to be the visionaries of the future giving us a better world, a more creative culture. It’s true, they are “brainwashed” to believe in themselves as unique free-thinking souls with the courage to penetrate the unknown fearlessly, and to not get in line to be sheep to the slaughter as narrow-minded conservatives hope they will be. I wouldn’t give up my education for anything; it set me free and made me the successful creative person I am today.

I agree in part, although my education was later in life, going to uni at 40, and loving it, but also finding they don’t want you to think and have your own ideas, or develop new or different theories, they just want you to learn what they’ve told you to research, and repeat it back in your understanding of it. They don’t like to be questioned, and there’s no room for crossover of fields, such as psychology with anthropology, which was annoying since they were my joint fields. Neither one had time for the other, and denied certain information provided by me, as wrong and irrelevant. I wasn’t brainwashed into believing myself as a unique free thinking person, I already was one before uni, but I did have the courage to challenge them, and being educated made me stronger. Education didn’t remove my previously beliefs, it made me less afraid of talking about my beliefs, that I do believe in evolution AND religion together; that witchcraft of whatever kind still exists in societies; ghosts exist – I’ve had an experience of this once; there is an afterlife (whatever your religious belief or not) since my father died and has let me know of this; UFOs I have seen for myself; the existence of aliens because UFOs exist; that governments try to control people by whatever means and are all corrupt lining their own pockets at the expense of the people they’re supposed to support; survival theories following apocalyptic events; and most lately a suspicion that some kind of plot to take world control exists by whatever foreign power decides to try it. I am not a crank, and won’t be fobbed off by people who are afraid to know more about underlying threats to society, I’d rather know and be ready for whatever is to come than wait to be kicked up the rear end while my head is stuck in the sand.

Well, if I *am* to be brainwashed, I prefer to be brainwashed by the likes of Galileo, Aristotle, Kant, or Darwin, than by the likes of David Icke, Art Bell, or the bronze-age nomads who believed a god spoke to them from a burning bush, that the earth is flat, and slavery is fine.

None of this gets any easier when you consider that there are people roaming the earth with the opinion that everything they teach in schools is ‘wrong’ and that all teaching is just a form of indoctrination. As an example, I had a prolonged discussion with someone in their 40’s who argued that ‘Algebra’ was useless and that it had no place in the education system. Extremely worrying, when you consider that ‘Algebra’ is essentially the cement that holds the building blocks of mathematics together. Then there’s the individuals that argue that there was no holocaust in WW2 – well, Hollerith machine summary printouts which were discovered after the war beg to differ. Also, there is exact evidence that punch card technology of the time was used for mass record keeping for those camps in addition to punch cards with details market on them for ‘Extermination’. Forget trying to convince conspiracy theorists, as you can’t reason someone out of something that they weren’t reasoned into in the first place – it’s a waste of time. They’re lost.

In a Time of Universal Deceit — Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act: Galileo, Aristotle, Kant, or Darwin in their day were ridiculed and attacked as David Icke is today. Skeptic I would suggest a little cognitive dissonance is at play here

Correct. Moreover the article seems to be biased from the very start. It makes a case by presuming that the moon landings is not hoax and vaccinations are indeed good ( despite of tons of evidence is available today against it). This write up is itself a conspiracy (not theory).

Both of which are pretty good bets, given that the notions that the moon landings were hoaxes and that vaccinations are bad are both absurd and so completely discredited that no reasonable person could take either seriously.

Sorry, Benny, but the reason you don’t like the article is that it’s about people like you.

The same people who are “highly educated” and don’t believe conspiracy theories also believe that marijuana is harmful for the body and should be illegal. They ignore the science that shows that marijuana cures cancer. But they ignore those facts because they are “highly educated” and thus are more elite than everyone else. They know better and they trust their government. Only stupid people who have cancer want marijuana legalized.

While others ignore abundant evidence that chronic use of the stuff, especially in adolescence, can take six to eight points off one’s IQ. Roth_Trader, ad hominems only tangentially related to the subject matter of an article are not only ineffective arguments but kind of scream that the writer is himself trying to advance an agenda rather than discuss the matter at hand.

Look at WHY people wanted to believe that the attack on New York was not all it seemed. Right wing extremists who want the populace to believe that the US Government is against them, and brought in Jew blaming, as usual, saying that it was a deliberate plot by the American Jews to start war in the Middle East! I am sure there is more nonsense, I won’t pretend to be fully informed on the subject.

In a certain sense, you’re right. It seems (to me) – when skepticism reinforces orthodoxy, educated people seem to be more skeptical. But the opposite seems to be true, amongst educated people, when skepticism calls into question the accepted orthodoxy.

Anti-vaxxers should not be mentioned in this article – they do not believe it is a conspiracy, but simply that their child is/ could be damaged by vaccines. This does not have sound science to back it up, they appear to be using anecdotal ‘evidence’ from (imo) rather neurotic parents.

There’s no ‘sound science’ to back it up because institutions like the CDC who proclaim that vaccines are 100% safe refuse to do control studies to compare vaccinated/non-vaccinated populations. If they did they would most likely find a negative correlation between number of vaccines received and good health. It’s pretty simple really – vaccines contain mercury, mercury is extremely toxic, injecting babies with mercury is not a good idea! People aren’t anti vaccines they’re pro safe vaccines.

Mercury exits in some vaccines in trace amounts of at most a few milllionths of a gram. You get more mercury into your body from eating a seafood meal. Harmless, and, in particular, the study linking it to autism was expsoed as BS. But the experiment about the relationship between health and vaccines was done before. Look at infant and child mortality before and after vaccines. In the past children regularly died or were crippled for life from horrible diseases like dyphteria, polio, measels, smallpox, typhus, rabies, and so on. Vaccines eradicated them, although there is a small resurgence of those fiends – in the population of the unfortunate children whose idiot parents didn’t vaccinate them. “Hey, sorry your legs don’t work, sonny – when you were born, I read a stupid website that said polio vaccines are dangerous”.

I am highly educated, but economically impoverished. The cushion of more money is not the reason that a better educated person is less likely to believe in conspiracy theories. To me it is clear that the scenarios typically presented as conspiracies are rooted in magical thinking, immature thinking, scapegoating, feeling powerless (not all poor people feel powerless), the need for excitement etc.

Education increases scepticism and analytical thinking. Whenever I have read about a conspiracy theory, I can see the gaping flaws in the ‘logic’. For example the last conspiracy theory I can across was that there is a conspiracy to make the British Royal Family Jewish! Part of the ‘evidence’ given for this absurdity is that Kate Middleton’s mothers maiden name is Goldsmith!

Agreed. I recently saw a video on Youtube… some dude claiming that the 9/11 planes were ‘photoshopped in’ because part of the wing disappeared behind a building when it shouldn’t have. Thing is, the building in question just ‘looked’ like it was further away, an optical illusion. He didn’t even bother to research on Google maps beforehand. That’s the type of stuff you’ve got to deal with, and stupid people lap it up without even bothering to double check it for themselves. That said, you can be educated and still be stupid.. 🙂

i noticed that many conspiracy theories people believe in would be pointless even if they were true. Suppose he entire royal family converted to judaism tomorrow. Apart from the queen no longer being the head of the church, which she is only formally in any case, what difference would it make? Not much more logical is the idea to, apparently, poison most of the population with “chemtrails”. Again,if it were true (apparently the evil conspirators do not breath air), what’s the point? You’d think the evil slave-master rulers would want *more* slaves, not less.

I think it’s absolutely crucial to see how this is mediated by, on one hand, feelings of control, comfort in one’s place in society and not feeling hard-done, ie accepting the society for what it is, and on the other, questioning attitudes, critical thinking etc.

To test these, one should compare highly educated marginalised/socially excluded people (not necessarily from marginalised groups, just once whose social status is not commensurate with their education) with more conformist/adjusted/lucky ones.

I’d love to see whether educated people’s beliefs in conspiracy theories are more related to how likely/unlikely the theory is (ie are they more likely to believe in plausible conspiracies eg Kennedy assassination than unplausible ones eg Moon landing hoax in comparison to uneducated people) and whether these beliefs are mediated by their expertise (whether doctors and biologists are less likely to believe in medical conspiracies or all conspiracies, whether engineers are less likely to believe in blown-up-Twin-Towers than non-engineers etc), or if it’s a general trend…

Anti-vaxxers should not be mentioned in this article – they do not believe it is a conspiracy, but simply that their child is/ could be damaged by vaccines. This does not have sound science to back it up, they appear to be using anecdotal ‘evidence’ from (imo) rather neurotic parents.

I met a woman a while ago who went on about the Illuminati, and she was the most stupid person I had met for years!

I think another factor for lovers of conspiracy theories is boredom. It makes life more exciting if you decide that there are secret plots all over the place. There is a childish fascination with it.

I assume that anti-vaxxers are not actually believing that the vaccines are INTENDED to harm children. If there are people who do believe that then yes, of course they are conspiracy theorists, but I can’t imagine what reason they would produce for the medical profession wanting to harm children.

Try thinking about the problems facing mankind, overpopulation leads to greater poverty, higher crime, inequalities, discrimination, etc. Humanity has taken over the planet, at the expense of all other species lives, wellbeing, and their habitats. As populations grow the world becomes an increasingly smaller place, finding green untouched areas is hard in towns and cities, nothing is preserved. We as a race impact on the planet and everything living to its detriment. The medical profession could have been instructed at a high level that vaccines should be compulsory, and without knowing of any intention to harm – not just children, but genetics that transfer down the generations. How medics could be unaware of this is unknown, but it’s not impossible to consider this a long-term project to reduce populations in a way that doesn’t come via normal loss through war and slow disease. This is an internal war to curb our growth. A conspiracy theory? – maybe, who knows …..

Overpopulation is a real issue, but those who call for a “drastic reduction in population” to make the human population “less damaging to the planet” – in other words genocide on a level that would make the dead of the holocaust or WWII seem like a rounding error – are not exactly inspriing confidence about their deep love for humanity. They are in effect holding a sign, “up with famine and pestilence!” – or, since they always imagine the blessed reduction in population occurring somewhere else, far away from them – “up with famine and pestilence, so long as it kills other people i don’t care about!”.

Considering the amount of lies people believe in that are held as truth, I’d say those accepted “truths” that have been so for eons are and always have been far more dangerous and destructive than a few individuals who opt out of vaccinations. The biggest false truth is the military industrial complex. The U.S. has been in almost perpetual war for over 200+ years and waged under the guise of “To Protect Country and Freedom” and it’s wrapped up all nice and pretty in pride and patriotic duty/sacrifice and celebration. It’s illusion/delusion is pinned with medals of honor for rape, thievery, torture and murder. The reality is that war is business waged purely for profit and power. It’s all a real game of thrones played by high functioning sociopaths using low functioning humans as “Monopoly” game pieces/tokens/PAWNS. These “Players” could never be satiated by virtual world video games. Each generation this “FARCE” is recycled. And this is just one example of the “false truths” the human race keeps alive. I see “conspiracy theories” as metaphorical ice picks that could eventually break down false truths. It’s highly unlikely that the education factor in all of this is not as relevant as the LOGIC and COMMON SENSE factor. Because … THEY HAVE! If one looks at the “education” factor, it is rife with books of history written by subjective/biased authors. This is especially true when war is written about. A good example would be the text books most read in the U.S. in early education. Do those text books tell the real truth about the extermination of the natives of the U.S.? No. Not even close. They even report that slavery was abolished. False. Today LOGIC and COMMON SENSE shows one that it has NEVER been abolished. It is referred today mostly as Human Trafficking. I could go on listing all the false truths among the human race of amnesiacs. But what good will it do. I understand why people hang onto them. Fear and self-preservation.

What you are writing sounds like garbage to me. Let’s resurrect Tesla and get his opinion on this matter. He would not be afraid of the truth and would try to warn people. I think you should research some of these “so called” conspiracy theories yourself before writing an article like this. For instance, there is an entire group of very educated and intelligent architects and engineers (Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth) that believe 911 was an inside job. There are many former CIA, ex-military and other very intelligent folks who also believe in finding the truth. I am sorry, but if you don’t believe something is happening behind the scenes in this world and has for a very long time, you have to really enjoy your ignorance. There is an overwhelming body of evidence regarding many conspiracy theories and they are labeled as such to immediately discredit them. You need to wake up yourself as people like you are part of the problem.

Another factor to consider here is cognitive dissonance. In order to believe in conspiracy theories we have to admit to ourselves that we have been tricked and that our long held ideologies are flawed, this is a difficult thing to do for anyone but particularly difficult the older and more educated we are.

Sure Rakie, I see what your saying and I think your beliefs are well intentioned but what your saying totally goes both ways. As in, if a person believed and fought for all these “theories,” and then one day realized that those therories were lacking so much information, critical thinking, and not to mention a huge annoyance of spreading misinformation for the communities that are actually trying to make a difference in the world, it is very hard to to let go and admit to ones self that you were actually the person you thought you were fighting against. Trust me it is very hard to come to terms with and emotionally painful. This goes for the, sadly, few anti-vaxxers out there that decided to switch gears deciding to vaccinate after researching and willing to accept scientists’ research and evidence. I will be critical here of some doctors and pro-vaxxers. I think more people would be willing to give an ear to the misinformation about vacinations that is out there if the anti-vaxxers were made to feel so bad and stupid for making a misinformed decision.

However, with my experience, I am specifically talking of the 911 inside job conspiracy. I was a huge believer. Not just in this conspiracy but in many others. Some friends of mine still believe the hype. I love them as people but it has come to the point where I avoid taking about it with them because instead of taking my critical thinking into consideration, at this point they just see me as becoming “brainwashed, conformist, joining the “dark side”.

The breaking point for me was this: There was a scene in one of those “informative” 911 inside job videos (and trust me I watched all of them and was convinced) that spoke of 4/4 timing in music and how all pop/rock music was in 4/4 timing because it was in step to the human heart beat and the heart was connected to the brain and the brain could be controlled. Basically they were saying that “the elite rulers of the world” deliberately made 4/4 the preferred timing in North American mainstream pop/rock to control the young people of the world through pop music on the radio, t.v etc.

I not university educated. In fact I didn’t even finish high school and either did my whole family. I grew up poor and uneducated and remained that way. However, I had been a pro musician at that point for about 15 years. When I watched that scene I had a “enlightenment” and understood how people with the ability to think critical would have seen it. The reason was because when it came to music, which I was educated in, not from university, but from experience, everything changed. What they were saying in that video about the time signature being used to control the young masses sounded so ridiculous to me that I burst out laughing how stupid it was. Then I had remembered I believed all the other theories in the video. I felt sick and really dumb when I thought about all the time I invested watching those videos. All the debates with people about how they didn’t know anything and were just sheep, brainwashed when in fact in was me who was closed minded and the sheep to not even listen to people who had spent countless hours researching, studying and understood what it was to be a critical thinker. I didn’t even know what that meant. I felt so ashamed when I thought of some of the conversations I had. Spreading misinformation about about government structures and politics, things I knew nothing about and I’m sure it was soooo obvious when I was tangled in debate. I’m turning red just writing about it.

I started to get interested in science and became educated about how the world works and how we can make it better. Yes there are tyrants and greedy people in every field but there are also good, smart people who want to make a difference in the world that are in healthcare, science, politics, engineering, business and even religion.

I suspect that the same explanation tells us why modern neo-atheists- fairly uniform in their ignorance of the content of the Bible and religion, the nearly universal and trans-cultural nature of religion, and prone to mistaking sixth-grade ad hominems for arguments- infest discussions of subjects having little to do with their own fanaticism with attempts to interject intolerant expressions of their personal prejudices into them.

It’s funny how a so called intelligent person would write a piece of garbage like this.
Intelligent people are the ones that question things not the other way round.
It’s the below 120 IQ that fluster around believing everything that’s told to them and what they see on TV or read in the News Paper.
Intelligent people look at what they are shown and go yeah right what a load of rubbish or yep that looks about right.
If you have ever watched Controlled demolitions and not just one but hundreds and then look at the Twin Towers collapsing you know straight away that’s how they were brought down.
Any Engineer worth his salt would tell you the speed they fell was impossible any other way.
Anyone with even half a brain watching the Apollo 11 mission should have had questions after especially considering that on the Moon they weighed one Sixth that of Earth and not only weighed one sixth but had one sixth the gravity pulling on them.
A one inch step would have turned into a 6 inch hop.
A 6 inch hop would have been a 36 inch high jump and so on.
All told the Astronauts with back packs weighed 25kgs.
If on Earth you could lift 10kgs with one hand you could have picked up a 60kg item on the Moon.
An Astronaut could have picked up the Moon Buggy by himself very easily as it only weighed 35kgs on the Moon.
None of the so called intellects looked at them on the Moon and saw anything wrong, yeah you people really are intellects.
Metal objects in the Sun reach 250C this is fact even confirmed by NASA as ISS and Shuttle crew had trouble with metal objects in space and need to use insulation wraps or Blankets to hold metal objects or their gloves would melt or get damaged.
Did the Apollo Manned missions show any heat problems ?
They lived in an Aluminium Box that was in direct Sunlight, none of you wondered geez um the side facing the Sun would get really hot as in 250C, the walls of the LM are 3mm thick and there is Oxygen inside the LM that would get hot as they couldn’t afford to lose to much air and had air scrubbers to help remove CO2 from their air.
Remember they had a very strict weight limit and why they left everything on the Moon instead of bringing it back with them.
No you people that are so intelligent look at the whole show and see no problems for the simple reason you are not intelligent.
You see a LM sitting on 2+ inches of dust and see no problems even though the rocket was only about 12 inches off the ground and would have blown with it’s over 3800lbs of thrust any lose dust and rocks quite a distance away, yet in your eyes with no understanding of rockets or thrust on a one sixth gravity Moon see no problems as no Air.
The Rocket had it’s own Oxygenator so still produced exhaust, if it had 3000+ thrust against the top of the rocket Engine the exhaust still had to evacuate the engine in a downward direction and the cone could be tilted slightly to manoeuvre the LM as it came down to aim the engine in the direction they wanted it to descend, with 4 multi directional stabilisers at each leg of the LM.
For those of you that have never looked at engines or braking or any physics involved with descent or ascent, if you have an object that weighs around 3000lbs you need a rocket engine that produces more than this to slow it down as mass moving requires more energy to slow.
You can Google the equation as I am feeling lazy at the moment 🙂
If you watch the landing and listen to them talk and actually take notice of the speeds they are descending you can work out how much fuel and power was required to slow the LM to land at a safe speed.
No atmosphere so no braking of any sort other than the rocket engine.
Google test firing of rockets and you can even see them testing the LM descent stage Rockets in a vacuum and it shows a very nice exhaust trail.
But the less intelligent a person the more gullible and less inquisitive they are.
Lucky we had intelligent people in the sciences or we would still be in caves wondering why God is throwing lightning bolts at us in a storm, or why the Volcano God is mad at us even though we threw a few nice Virgins into the thing.
What do you think inventors and scientists do ? Are they not intelligent as they question and pick apart every thing another scientist tells them to try and prove them wrong or right.
It’s called the Scientific method and the Apollo manned missions fail this in a big way as only NASA has ever said they put a man on the Moon, no other entity even came close.
Even now it can’t be repeated and many are trying and time frames from 2018 to 2025 are being bandied about.
If it was so easy and 100% success from Apollo 11 to 17, success in the fact no life was lost in any of those missions.
It was pretty close though with Apollo 13 though and was just lucky Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton were there or it would have gone to shit 😉

I would say this was a reactionary piece, and he got his reaction, everyone knows the first thing we are taught is to question everything, what does a two or three year old say when you tell them something ? Why of course lol.
Why would it be built into us at such an early age to ask questions if all we are meant to do is take everything for granted on what we are told.
The books have been changed many times since I went to Primary School 60 years ago.
How on Earth can you work at a profession and become an expert and then hear someone say something you know for a fact is wrong and then not say something.
Then because it goes against something like the Moon landings of course you then have to be wrong and a Conspiracy theorist.
How just because you are an expert in a couple of fields that prove at least two things they said was possible on the Moon, in reality are not and because you have worked in that field for so long and seen it’s not possible as well as others you talk to in those same fields also agree with you, yet tell any believer in something they couldn’t have done this or that and you are instantly classed a moron or retard lol.
I know which people are the lower IQ and it’s definitely not those that question as imagine a scientist with that attitude lol

The whole premise of this article is highly educated equates to high intelligence. A number of conspiracy theories require highly critical/abstract thinking and an awareness of subtle inconsistencies that require high intelligence. Whereas accepting the accepted story relies on a large degree of cognitive dissonance an indicator of low intelligence but found in a lot of educated people. There is a valid theory that education is merely indoctrination with a certain narrative, education is no precursor to thinking. An example being the JFK assassination where we have to believe in the “accepted story of the magic bullet and the incredible contradictory information presented of the single shooter. Only a fool would be happy with the official story.

How amusing. I have an IQ of 158 and am a member of Mensa and am a conspiracy realist as I have lived through many of the experiences people write about. Does that make me less educated? Oh, by the way. I hold a first class honours degree also. I think there maybe a conspiracy abroad here……….what say you?

Oh.. GIVE ME A BREAK!!! I just looked up your Twitter “Rothmeier Jones” and you are nothing but a NWO puppet with your pyramid BS and OBVIOUS agenda pushing horse-shat all over the place, so just STOP already!

Intelligence has nothing to do with gullibility, just because you have a high I.Q doesn’t mean you have common sense or can’t be gullible 🙂
I also have a high I.Q and was tested by the Companies I have done work for as the job I did required a high I.Q as well as very high logic skills.
I was booted from Religious instructions as a 6 year old for asking questions and was made to sit in the library instead during those lessons which I was very happy to do as I read every book in the school library rather than wasted time on myth being treated as real.
I never take anything as gospel and question everything as I like to learn.
How can you say you have a high I.Q and then believe everything you are told, what a crock.
The CIA coined the term conspiracy to stop gullible people like yourself from looking at anything they wanted kept secret or from people delving to much into them.
Seems to work for you, oh and by the way I have a really nice Bridge for sale would you be interested ? It’s not a conspiracy 😉

Exactly Fiona, how can anyone that says they are intelligent just believe on faith, I always told my children I would believe anything they told me up to the point I catch them in a lie, I always told them, never lie to me, for one I will know and secondly you will lose my trust.
I am a Photographic expert, I repaired film,photos and glass plate negatives for the Government as well as three Universities.
I have repaired radiation damaged films, it’s not hard to tell a film exposed to radiation.
It is one of the harder problems to repair,
If you look at the Soviets Moon images you will understand why, look at older Military spy images before they worked out how to do it correctly as well.
Madam Curie also found out what radiation does to a film plate, if you remember your Science lessons 🙂
One dose of x-rays will give a great image of our Bones onto film, now do this same dose 21 times and tell me how much of the film would still be useable.
Most experts agree that Regolith on the Moon at 15 feet thick would be sufficient to protect man on the Moon. Yet NASA will have you believe that a maximum of 3mm was sufficient to protect the Apollo 11 astronauts during a Solar Maxim.
There is just so much wrong with the NASA Apollo missions, I could write for days 🙂
The Photographs proved they lied for my Peers as well as for myself.
One simple other thing was the TV camera they sent on the Lander was a Westinghouse 20fps camera, how did we get back 24fps video from this ? I am not saying you cant convert said video to any FPS you like, the film will only have the 20fps original data to use and there for a 24fps copy would have 4 of the frames duplicated, there are no duplicates, how did they get the extra data ?
Film and Photos are one thing you can not BS to me. The biggest problem now is they lost all the original video as well as all the photos and telemetry data ? No Original data from Apollo 11 exists any more, I can show you glass plate negatives from some of the first Cameras ever made and yet a so called Historic event such as the Apollo 11 wasn’t worth saving anything from :), how silly to think any conspiracy exists 🙂
I do not believe every conspiracy, I give weight depending how much validity it has as far as Photographic or Video, as soon as I see faked photos a red flag goes up.
I was also alive and well listening to Von Braun and Van Allen talking about the problems of the crater the Lander could fall into from the rocket exhaust to the worries of the radiation in the VABs.
Van Allen sent a Rocket into space and found the VABs and the Geiger counter he sent with the rocket registered a maximum reading, he then shielded the second geiger counter to be able to with stand the maximum reading and it to came back at maximum. Even with shielding enough to handle the maximum on a Geiger counter they still got enough to kill humans in a matter of hours.
Show the shielding they ended up using for the Astronauts suits or the Command module or Lander ? 3MM maximum Aluminium.
Why is it no one does any tests in our modern era to show how safe the VABs are ?, they send Missions to the ISS all the time, one geiger counter on board and go as close to the VABs as is safe to show just how simple it was for them back in the late 60’s and 70’s with 50’s and 60’s technology ;), just get close enough to get the shooting star effect the Shuttle Astronauts spoke of and do a geiger counter reading ? go a little closer and see how fast the readings go up and it will be simple to work out how strong it will be in the actual VABs from this information.
We never get any actual scientific information from any of the missions as then we can work out for ourselves as not everyone is mentally retarded there are some people still about that know how to use math to work out problems 😉

….
why is questioning they validity of official narratives written of as crazy? This stigmatizing of individual thought worries me. As a highly educated person I do not dispute the need for vaccinations and the fact that it planet is a sphere. To not question for example the facts of 9-11, the implausible way that attack was carried out is irresponsible.

If you are referring to the studies that indicate educated people are less likely to be religious- then yes, you are correct that the uneducated are more susceptible to conspiracies. To be intelligent is to be comfortable not knowing .

The truth js that you don’t have money to give to me, i we be the 1 to give you money because your level is not that of first class just as I’m
It’s of the reason why i want to help you so that you will become wealthy just as every member of our organization

Scepticism is one of the best qualities you can instil in students. It leads to questioning the status quo, to thinking out of the box and reaching their own conclusions based on what they have learnt. Education comes as a standard package for all of us. It is our unique interpretation of it that drives evolution and change.

The phrase “Conspiracy Theory” was coined and weaponized by the CIA as stated in document 1035-960 during the 1960’s, to discredit the public from discussing certain important events. Operation Northwoods, Operation MockingBird, Operation PaperClip, and Operation MK ULTRA to name a few are some of the most important yet highly classified information kept from the masses for years etc. There is a reason why so many Americans and even Engineers/ experts believe 9/11 was an inside job of some sort. One of the biggest false flags in modern history, if not the biggest. Secret societies exist, and the biggest enemy of any empire like the U.S for example, is not any foreign enemy or army; but it’s none other than one domestically disguised from within. From within. This is why JFK was intentionally assasinated by members of the CIA quite possibly, members of his own government. Geoengineering/ Chemtrails controlling the weather, & Agenda 21 or 21/30. I could go on, but it doesn’t take an education to look at the tell tale signs of what is really at stake & is happening

Education is indoctrination, which is to program young minds over time according to the predetermined desires of those masterminding the curiculum. And no, the education system never was hijacked by anyone, that is the intended purpose of education. It was invented for that purpose. Mass mind control. Like stated in this article…”education is likely to install the mental tools that are needed to approach far-fetched conspiracy theories with a healthy dose of skepticism.” Mind you, that the word “install” was used. And note that “mental tools” is just another way of saying “programmed beliefs/assumptions”. The more educated you are, the more programmed you are. That’s why the highly educated dismiss the very idea of something as soon as you attach the words “conspiracy theory” to it. See, that term has been programmed into them as being synonymous with untrue. Those with high intelligence yet not highly educated are not as likely to dismiss the possible and obvious truths about the world. The highly educated write carefully worded articles in opposition to the less educated by reinforcing the preprogrammed beliefs/assumptions of the highly indoctrinated…I mean educated. But the evil geniuses are well aware of the intelligence of the free human mind and know how to string them along with false conspiracies that are partly or mostly true.

Give me a break! This article is LAUGHABLE at best and just PROVES even more that the illuminati and their media minions have to continue to put out this garbage coining people who actually THINK as being the dumb “uneducated” people in society v s. the “highly schooled sheeple.” I am what one would consider a “highly educated” person in regards to the education system of today and I literally count it as DUNG at this point!

Don’t kill the messenger and those of us who are trying to expose the unimaginable truth just because you don’t want to hear it and couldn’t be bothered by anything except your “high education,” which is nothing more than HIGHLY EXPENSIVE BRAINWASHING that uuuuh YOU actually PAID to undergo! THAT my friend is classic idiocy at it’s finest! Continuing on that note, the real survivors in the coming “set up and paid for wars” are going to be the truly WISE that have “real and usable” SURVIVAL SKILLS combined with TRUE FAITH, not useless “knowledge” about a completely fake history. They will sadly find out one day the joke was on them!